The Public Record
Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, and politician who is widely credited as the founder of the cultural and political philosophy of conservatism. Regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers and political writers of the 18th century, Burke spent the majority of his career in Great Britain and was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) from 1766 to 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. His writings played a significant role in influencing public views and opinions in both Great Britain and France following the French Revolution in 1789, and he remains a major figure in modern conservative circles.
It will teach posterity not to make war upon either religion or philosophy for the abuse which the hypocrites of both have made of the two most valuable blessings conferred upon us by the bounty of the universal Patron, who in all things…
But history in the nineteenth century, better understood and better employed, will, I trust, teach a civilized posterity to abhor the misdeeds of both these barbarous ages.
Such is the effect of the perversion of history by those who, for the same nefarious purposes, have perverted every other part of learning.
It is thus with all those who, attending only to the shell and husk of history, think they are waging war with intolerance, pride, and cruelty, whilst, under color of abhorring the ill principles of antiquated parties, they are authorizing…
You are terrifying yourselves with ghosts and apparitions, whilst your house is the haunt of robbers.
The spirit transmigrates; and, far from losing its principle of life by the change of its appearance, it is renovated in its new organs with the fresh vigor of a juvenile activity.
Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names,--to the causes of evil, which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear.
A certain quantum of power must always exist in the community, in some hands, and under some appellation.
It may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine, furnishing offensive and defensive weapons for parties in Church and State, and supplying the means of keeping alive or reviving dissensions and animosities, and adding fuel to civil fury.
In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.
Corporate bodies are immortal for the good of the members, but not for their punishment.
I rather suspect that vices are feigned or exaggerated, when profit is looked for in their punishment.
It is not with much credulity I listen to any, when they speak evil of those whom they are going to plunder.
It is no soothing news to my ears, that great bodies of men are incurably corrupt.
I do not like to see anything destroyed, any void produced in society, any ruin on the face of the land.
It is a sour, malignant, envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long nourished in splendor and in honor.
He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart, who wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion and permanence to fugitive esteem.
The strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has found to belong to him, and to distinguish him, is one of the securities against injustice and despotism implanted in our nature.
I do not pretend to know France as correctly as some others; but I have endeavored through my whole life to make myself acquainted with human nature,--otherwise I should be unfit to take even my humble part in the service of mankind.
He never sought to be loved without putting himself first in a condition to be feared.
He possessed, indeed, great humanity and mildness, but an humanity and mildness that never stood in the way of his interests.
The triumph of the victorious party was over the principles of a British Constitution.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
